Part FOUR - ON BOARD SS STRATHAIRD

1959-1960

By Michael Brady and Ken Beard

Although Ken had disembarked from Chusan, his time at sea was in no way finished because just a few short months later he joined another P&O Liner. This time, however, he was somewhat reluctant to do so because the ship in question was the 28-year-old ‘Strathaird’. In her heyday, Strathaird and her near-identical sister Strathnaver had been the toast of P&O’s fleet boasting luxurious fittings split between two classes. By 1959 however, Strathaird was a very different ship; she was now a somewhat tired one-class Liner servicing the UK - Australia run primarily carrying immigrants. Externally she was still beautiful but she had a reputation for breakdowns and mechanical failures; unofficially her crew had nicknamed her ‘Scrap-aird’. As Ken put it; “Nobody wanted to join her.” Even his first time aboard on November 3 1959, was hampered by engineering problems;

“I reported to the dock Superintendent’s office at Tilbury who informed me that the ship had not arrived yet and would be late ,so I left my suitcase and with another chap went across to Gravesend to the cinema On returning to the dock the ‘Aird was alongside and we went on board to find that the generators were down and that they were paying off the crew by candle light until power was coupled up to shore.”

Above: TSS Strathaird by Michael Brady, Oceanliner Designs. Learn More

Strathaird was roughly the same size as Chusan but with far less-modern equipment that would prove to be idiosyncratic in the extreme;

“From my memory she had 4 main Yarrow boilers with two smaller ones that were not used any more. I guess the stokehold and boilers had a hard life but I was lucky as a lad that had sailed with me on Chusan as Supernumerary 4th Engineer and between us we managed to keep things up together.

One problem was that the rubbish fuel oil that we were burning was making a mound of carbon in front of the Burner so now and again we would have to take the front of the Burner Casing off and get a bar to break it and push to the rear of the Furnace .

The main problem with the ship was the electrics and the Starting Platform Console. It had three operating levers for each engine and they almost like railway signal box levers;

Was to increase steam to the turbine
Was direction ahead or astern
Was for the 3-phase electric motors

When a movement was rang down on the telegraph the operation was as follows;

Increase steam to the turbine.
Go ahead or astern.
Go into the first phase, wait for the load to drop off, then into the next phase and so on.

It always got a bit of a panic as the bridge thought they were driving a motor car. The main problem was stopping as you had to pull levers 2 and 3 off quick with a bang to stop the switches from arcing.”

Above: Contemporary postcard showing Strathaird’s classic promenade deck.

Strathaird was one of the only ships that the junior engineers were not allowed to do the main engine manoeuvring. I was allowed to operate the standby procedure once, but most of the time was in the stokehold.”

Ken’s experience boarding a blacked-out Strathaird prefaced a series of mechanical mishaps that ensured the ship lived up to her reputation as a troublemaker for engineers. Perhaps the most major “breakdown” a ship can suffer at sea is power outage as this can leave her uncontrollable and at the mercy of the sea. Ken recounts;

“During the seven months that I sailed on her we only had 1 major breakdown with the electrics under the starting platform console, on a trip from dry dock on the continent to Southampton and were adrift in the north sea with all the electrics shut down to let the electricians get under the console, of course the boilers were shut down as well and we had a hell of a job to get flashed up again because the Emergency Generator could hardly take the load.”

Life on board may have been more lively than on Chusan but it too began to assume a routine and rhythm of regularity. Operating the ageing Liner focused on completing a series of tasks and checks throughout the duration of a four hour-long ‘Watch’;

“As the 4th Engineer I was on the Senior Watch 4-8 am and 4-8 pm in the Stokehold (Ed.; Boiler room). I was 15 minutes early to get down below and change over from the previous watch run by the Supernumerary 4th Engineer. There were three indian crew with me, the Tindal (Ed.; second-most senior engine room petty officer) and two Og Wallas (Firemen), it was better to know the language (Hindi) as you could get the job done quicker.”

P&O had a long-standing tradition whereby it would employ Indian and Pakistani crewmen for roles across the fleet’s ships, from positions as deck crew to kitchen hands. The Og Wallas (Agwallahs), or Firemen, were recruited largely from the Pathan Hills of Northern Pakistan, presumably because their physical toughness suited working in the demanding conditions of the Stokehold.

Above: P&O’s Far East service employed Indian and Pakistani men as early as 1853 and they soon proved themselves extremely capable crew members. Image from; http://www.pandosnco.co.uk/crews.html

“On taking over the watch the crew would take out the the Burner Bars one at a time and replacing with Bars that the previous Watch cleaned, checking that the steam pressure was kept up on the red line as any drop would lower the engine revolutions, making sure we were not making smoke and that the combustion was OK by controlling the Forced Draught Fans (some ships had forced draught and induced draught fans), making sure that the fuel oil temp and pressure was OK and each Burner Bar had an Atomiser that was cleaned by the crew ready for the next Watch .

On some ships the Chief Engineer would do his rounds about 6 a m. Just before the end of the Watch I had to note all the pressures and temperatures take into the engine room to be entered into the log. It was critical that the boilers used distilled feed water (not more than .02 grains of salt per gallon) as any impurities would cause the boilers to prime and carry over; small molecules in the superheated steam could pit the turbine blades.”

As if the complexity weren’t bad enough, the conditions could also be downright dangerous. Liners such as Strathaird relied on superheated steam coursing through the turbines at around 525 psi and 800 degrees Fahrenheit. A leak could have disastrous consequences for anybody unfortunate enough to be positioned nearby. In normal conditions the temperature in the Stokehold wouldn’t drop below 90 degrees F and would nudge 140 in the Tropics.

Above: Strathaird makes headway through a glorious blue sea, date and source unkown.

Ken only completed two voyages on Strathaird but that ‘short’ stint still lasted seven months. With a wife and two year old son at home, Ken realised that prolonged time away from home was no longer bearable. Strathnaver was to be his last ship, but his parting would not be without drama. In May 1960 the Ship was in Tilbury London and Ken had told the 2nd Engineer he would not be signing on again, but as the ship was going into drydock and spending a few days connected to shore power he agreed to be on standby until Strathaird could be towed to a berth again. On board were his wife and child and just before quitting the ‘Aird for good, she gave him a dreadful fright;

“I fired up a boiler and the 2nd Engineer put a Turbo Generator on load. Everything seemed O.K and I was leaning on the desk looking at the water level and Boiler pressure when there was a loud ‘bang!’ and steam escaping.

There were several shoreside Boilermakers working in the cold boilers; they shot out of them like rabbits out of their holes and ran out of the Boiler Room. My Tindal handed me a wheel key and he disappeared. I had to think quickly, turn off the fires and put a rag over my mouth; the steam was filling the Boiler Room so the leak must be on a Steam Line. If I shut the main Steam Line the lights will go out and I did not have my torch. The only alternative was the Saturated Steam Line, so up to the top of the Boilers I went and shut the Saturated Steam; luckily it was the right one.

I clambered down from the top of the Boiler, put the fire back on and leant against the desk shaking with relief. What had gone wrong? A Reducing Valve on the Saturated Steam Line had been replaced wrongly during the dry docking shut down and blown.

The ‘2nd’ Engineer came in and asked; “What’s up Char Sahib?” and I handed the wheel key to him and said “it’s all yours!”, went topside to my wife in the cabin and had a large Gin and Tonic.

The next day the shoreside Superintendent came on and tried to persuade to do the last trip before she was scrapped. Needless to say I refused; plus my late wife said that she would divorce me if I stopped on.”

That would be the last time Ken would set foot in an Engine Room as a crew member and even the Superintendent’s promise of sailing on P&O’s prestigious brand new Canberra would not sway him; Ken’s days at sea were behind him.

Above: Strathaird dressed with flags and flying her ‘paying-off pennant’, denoting that this would be her final voyage after close to thirty years at sea. Ken refused to join her for this voyage.

EPILOGUE

In five short years Ken had served on board four ships with fascinating histories and had enjoyed high adventure and some very happy, memorable days at sea. Initially, as a young man from Swindon, his prospects seemed limited to working on the Great Western Railway works but P&O offered him a ‘golden ticket’ to explore and see the world; it is hard to imagine a more jarring contrast than the grey British railway yards and the spectacular turquoise blue of the Suez canal, the familiarity of Swindon’s streets and the bustling excitement of Hong Kong’s marketplaces. Ken had seen the world but, for him, the most important thing was his family and he decided to embark on the entirely different adventure that parenthood presents.

After leaving P&O, Ken and his young family moved to Wroughton where a whole new generation of Beards still reside today. Ken returned to the Great Western Railway for a short period of time before joining ‘Pressed Steel’ as a tool maker; that company soon became ‘British Layland’ and then eventually, through a series of acquisitions, Rover and finally BMW. Ken finally retired in 1997. Ken still found time to go on cruises and, fittingly, his preferred carrier was P&O.

Above: Ken looking happily at-home in the engine room of a vast modern container ship in more recent times.

This whole series of articles came about in 2018; I was just starting out as an enthusiastic, if somewhat naïve, illustrator and was keen to hear some first-hand accounts of life at sea on board the big liners of yesteryear that I was planning on drawing. I came across Ken’s contact details on a guestbook and what followed shocked me; Ken could recall technical details that had largely sat dormant in his brain for decades. I quickly published two articles (Parts 1 and 2 of this series) which barely even scratched the surface of his time at sea and did not even cover Chusan, his favourite ship. I promised I would follow up with Parts 3 and 4 soon, but time got away from me. We would email occasionally but Ken’s health appeared to be deteriorating. Even though he had a terminal illness, Ken made sure to check on me through the COVID pandemic to make sure I was doing okay. Early in 2021 I thought to email Ken to check in on him but an email arrived from his grandson before I got the chance; Ken had passed away after a short illness.

I still feel that I have let my friend down in that I did not get to publishing the final two parts of his story in his lifetime, but I only hope that this account of his life at sea will be a source of pride for his family and form some small part of the rich and ancient tapestry of maritime history, that ages-old tale of man’s attempts to conquer the mighty ocean of which Ken certainly played his role.

Ken summed it all up well himself;

“It was the biggest adventure of my life.”